Lady John Russell Part 9

Lord John dined at Lansdowne House--a last Cabinet dinner....

Letter from the Queen to Lord John, which for a moment overcame him--she does indeed lose a faithful adviser, and deeply does he feel it for his country and her. Oh, I never loved him so well; his mind rises with reverse. It is no small matter for a man whose whole soul is intent on the good of his country to be stopt in his high career--to be, apparently at least, rejected by that country--but no, the people are still and will be more and more with him, and his career will still be great and glorious.... And to me he has never shone so brightly as now--so cheerful, so calm, so hopeful for the great principles for which he falls--and yet, as that moment showed, regretting the event so deeply.

They went down to stay a few days with the Duke of Bedford, and she notes in her diary:

Continued to like Woburn better and better. Some people went and others came, among the last, Lord Melbourne. Lord Melbourne did not, I thought, appear to advantage; he showed little wish for conversation with anybody, but seemed trying to banish the thoughts of his reverse by talking nonsense with some of the ladies.

The elections which followed the defeat of the Melbourne Ministry gave the Tories a majority of over eighty seats. Peel was joined by Lord Ripon, Lord Stanley, and others, who had supported Lord Grey during the Reform Bill.

The Whig Party were in a discomfited condition. They did not look back on their past term of office with much satisfaction; they had been constantly in a minority; and although such useful measures as Rowland Hill's Penny Postage had been carried, nothing had been done to meet the most urgent needs of the time.

The Duke of Bedford had placed Endsleigh at Lord John's disposal, and next month he travelled down with Lady John to Devons.h.i.+re. Endsleigh is one of the most beautiful places in Devons.h.i.+re; it is near the little town of Tavistock, where Drake was born. The house looks down from a height on the lovely wooded slopes of the River Tamar. In letters to his brother Lord John had said of Endsleigh, "It is the place I am most fond of in the world." "I think no place so beautiful for walks and drives." He and Lady John always retained the happiest memories of their life there.

ENDSLEIGH, _October_ 22, 1841

Long delightful shooting walk with Lord John--delightful although so many songs, poems, and sentiments of my greatest favourites against shooting were running in my head to strengthen the horror that I and all women must have of it.

"Inhuman man--curse on thy barbarous art."

Inhuman woman to countenance his barbarity!

ENDSLEIGH, _October_ 26, 1841

Such a day! White frost in the morning, sparkling in the brightest sun, which shone all day. The trees looking redder and yellower from the deep blue sky beyond--the different distances of the hills so marked--the river s.h.i.+ning like silver. Oh, what a day! We were prepared for it by the beauty of last night--such that I could scarcely bring myself to shut my window and go to bed. A snow-white mist over all except the garden below my eyes and the tops of the hills beyond, and a bright moon "tipping with silver every mountain head."

ENDSLEIGH, _November_ 11, 1841

With Lord John to hear an examination of the School at Milton Abbot. He gave prizes and made a little speech in praise of master and boys, which made him and, I think, me more nervous than any of the speeches I have heard from him in the House of Commons. I do not know why it should have been affecting, but it was so.... Walk with him in the dusk--his kindness, his tenderness are the joy of my life.

Her marriage had brought her greater happiness than she had thought possible. Writing to her mother from Endsleigh on November 15th, she says:

How little I thought on my last birthday how it would be before my next. I looked in my journal to see about it and found it full of _him_; but not exactly as I should write now--reproaching myself for not returning the affection of one whose character I admired and liked so much. I should have been rightly punished by his thinking no more about me; but then, to be sure, I should not have known what my loss was. He said a few days ago that he hoped it would be a happy birthday--said it as humbly as he always speaks of his powers of making me so--yet he must know that a brighter could not have dawned upon me, and that he is the cause....

_Lord John Russell to Lady Minto_

ENDSLEIGH, _November_ 23, 1841

f.a.n.n.y's own letters will have given you the best insight into her feelings since we came here. It has been the most fortunate thing for us all. f.a.n.n.y herself, Addy, Georgy, Miss Lister, and indeed all of us, have had means of fitting and _cementing_ here, which no London or visiting life could have given us. I never can be sufficiently grateful for such a blessing as f.a.n.n.y is to me; and I only feel the more grateful that she reconciles herself so well to the loss of the home she loved so well. Nor is this by loving you or any one she has left at all the less--far from it, every day proves her devotion to you and her anxiety for your happiness.

They could not take a long holiday, although Lord John was now in Opposition. Early in February the great Anti-Corn Law League bazaar was held at Manchester, and a few days later Peel carried his sliding scale: 20s. duty when corn was 57s., 12s. when the price was 60s., and 1s. when it reached 73s. Lord John proposed an amendment in favour of a fixed duty of 8s.

CHESHAM PLACE, [23] _February_ 14, 1842

Beginning of Corn Law debate. Went to hear Lord John. He began--excellent speech--attacked the measure as founded on the same bad principle as the present corn laws; showed the absurdity of any corn laws to make us independent of foreign countries; the cruelty of doing nothing to relieve the distress of the manufacturing districts; the different results of a sliding scale and a fixed duty; the advantages of free trade, even with all countries, especially with the United States, etc., etc.; was much cheered. Answered by Mr. Gladstone, beside whose wife I was sitting.

[23] Lord John had built a house, 37, Chesham Place, which was henceforward their London home.

Lord John's amendment was lost by 123 votes; Villiers' and Brougham's amendments in favour of total repeal by over three hundred. This measure of the sliding scale did not embody Peel's real conviction at the time; its object was to discover how much the agricultural party would stand.

Gladstone himself was in favour of a more liberal reduction in the sliding scale; and it appears from his journal that he very nearly resigned the Presidency of the Board of Trade in consequence of Peel's measure. Peel asked Gladstone to reply to Lord John Russell. "This I did," he says, "and with all my heart, for I did not yet fully understand the vicious operation of the sliding scale on the corn trade, and it is hard to see how an eight-s.h.i.+lling duty could even then have been maintained."

During the next ten months Lord and Lady John were less at the mercy of politics than they were destined to be for many years to come. They were constantly together, either at Chesham Place or at Endsleigh. Lord Minto was living near them in London.

_Lord Minto to Lady Mary Abercromby_

LONDON, _March_ 1, 1843

MY DEAR MARY,--I think you will be glad to have my report of f.a.n.n.y since I have been established almost next door to her, and the more so as it will be so favourable. For whatever misgivings I may have had from difference of age, or the cares of a ready-made nursery of children, have entirely gone off. I really never saw anybody more thoroughly or naturally happy, or upon a footing of more perfect ease and confidence and equality. I forget if you know Lord John well behind the scenes, but there is a simplicity and gentleness and purity in his character which is quite delightful, and it chimes in very fortunately with f.a.n.n.y's. She has drawn prizes, too, in the children, who are really as nice a little tribe as can be imagined, and I reckon myself a good judge of such small stock.

They are very comfortably housed, much better than I ever hope to be in London, and f.a.n.n.y seems to govern her establishment very handily. I don't know that she has yet quite brought herself to believe that there is anybody in the world so wicked as really to intend to cheat, or to overcharge, or to neglect her work for their own pleasure, but I suppose she will make this discovery in time....

Adieu, dearest Mary, I have such a craving to see you again that I hardly know how I shall keep myself within bounds on this side of the Channel.

Your affectionate,

MINTO

_Lady Minto to Lord John Russell_

MINTO, _March_ 5, 1842

You can now be pretty well aware of what my delight will be to see my dear f.a.n.n.y again, and to know her tolerably well; but you have not lived with her five-and-twenty years, and therefore memory has no place in your affection for her, and you cannot even now comprehend the blank she makes to me. But you can well comprehend the extent of my pleasure in reading her letters, which breathe happiness in every line, and in hearing from everybody of her good looks and cheerfulness. My only fear for her is an anxiety, natural considering the great change, that her cares and occupations may weigh at times too heavily upon her, and that she will not wish you to see she feels it. This is the only thing she would conceal from you; but as I know the sort of feelings she formerly endeavoured to conceal from me, it is but too probable she has the same fault still, and nothing but trying to extract her feelings from her will cure her, or at least mitigate the evil.

The next great event in their lives was the birth of their first-born son, John, afterwards Lord Amberley.

On the 10th of December, 1842, our dear little baby boy was born.

He has been thriving ever since to our heart's content. It has been a happy, happy time to me, and to us all. And now I am a mother.

Oh, Heavenly Father, enable me to be one indeed and to feel that an immortal soul is entrusted to my care.

On the 10th of December, a year later, she expressed the same thought in the following lines:

Rough winter blew thy welcome; cold on thee Looked the cold earth, my snowdrop frail and fair.

Again that day; but wintry though it be, Come to thy Mother's heart: no frost is there.

What sparkles in thy dark and guileless eye?

Life's joyous dawn alone undimmed by care!

Thou gift of G.o.d, canst thou then wholly die?

Oh no, a soul immortal flashes there; And for that soul now spotless as thy cheek-- That infant form the Almighty's hand has sealed-- Oh, there are thoughts a mother ne'er can speak; In midnight's silent prayer alone revealed.

After Lady John had recovered, they went down to Woburn, and later to stay with Lord Clarendon at The Grove. At both houses large parties were a.s.sembled, and Greville notes in his diary that Lord John was in excellent spirits. "Buller goes on as if the only purpose in life was to laugh and make others laugh," and he adds, "John Russell is always agreeable, both from what he contributes himself and his hearty enjoyment of the contributions of others."

One of the princ.i.p.al events which had interested Lady John in the past year had been the secession from the Scottish Church and the establishment of the. Free Church of Scotland. Her feelings about it are expressed in this letter to her sister, Lady Mary Abercromby:

ENDSLEIGH, _September_ 11, 1842 The divisions in the Kirk distress me so much that I never read anything about them now. It is disagreeable to find people with whom one cannot agree making use of the most sacred expressions on every occasion where their own power or interests can be helped by them. You used not to be much of a Kirk woman; but surely you would regret seeing many of her children come over to the English. I have just been reading the Thirty-nine Articles for the first time in my life, and am therefore particularly disposed to prefer all that is simple in matters of religion. They _may_ be true; but whether they are so or not, is what neither I, nor those who wrote them, nor the wisest man that lives, can judge; that they are presumptuous in the extreme, all who read may see. In short, I hate theology as the greatest enemy of true religion, and may therefore leave the subject to my betters.... I need hardly tell you that we are leading a happy life, since we are at Endsleigh and _alone_.

Did I ever tell you that we are becoming great botanists? I have some hopes of equalling you before we meet, as I feel new light breaks upon me every day, and every night too, for I try so hard to repress my ardour during the day for fear of being tiresome to everybody, that my dreams are of nothing else. John, of course, is very little advanced as yet, but he finds it so interesting, to his surprise, that I hope even Parliament will not quite drive it out of his head.

Early in February she was back again in London, where social and political distractions, together with the care of a young family of stepchildren, were soon to prove too much for her strength.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_